Voters shall have the opportunity to make Massachusetts’ educational system more just for all students. By voting YES on Question 2, we can eliminate the narrowed curricula created by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) graduation requirement.
The English Language Arts portion of the MCAS primarily tests reading comprehension on short passages, typically the length of an article you’d find in a magazine. Go visit the DESE website to see sample questions. You will be hard pressed to find grammar questions. Grammar is at least mentioned in the directions for the short written statement. I say short because it is a maximum of two handwritten pages (on the paper version of the exam). Two written pages hardly qualifies as in-depth thinking, especially when some students write so much larger than others.
In my three decades teaching I have witnessed the slow death of the novel. Forgive me for sounding old, but “back in my day” we read 10 novels a year at Boston Latin Academy. We read one novel per term of what we called “inside reading,” meaning the teacher guided us through the novel or Shakespearean play. We also had “outside reading” which was a novel or play we read on our own, like John Steinbeck’s “The Pearl” or Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin In the Sun,” and then we were quizzed on our reading. Rose Horowitch recently had an article in The Atlantic wherein she writes that elite college students have a difficult time reading novels. “To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.”
Novels are not on the MCAS so schools don’t emphasize them. Don’t let anyone fool you, schools certainly do “teach to the test” because schools and districts are judged by the MCAS results. From my vantage point, students are less prepared for college today as a result of a reliance upon the MCAS for their English Language Arts knowledge.
Here’s what I mean: I teach Latin. Prior to the MCAS I could assume that my students knew English grammar. Today I know that they do not.
Latin nouns have five main cases (seven for you scholars). Today when I ask my students “For what is the dative case used?” I get the standard answer of “It is used for the indirect object.” However, when I follow up with “And what is an indirect object?”; the usual reply is “I don’t know.” The students don’t know because by and large schools have stopped teaching grammar.
Oh, someone from central administration might say that grammar is “woven it” or “taught in mini-lessons.” What that means is that grammar is not emphasized.
And readers, “Why isn’t English grammar emphasized?”
Because the MCAS does not emphasize grammar.
For those who argue that some sort of system needs to be in place to ensure that high school diplomas mean something, rest assured, I hear you. Let’s make sure that ALL diplomas mean something, shall we.
I propose that all schools in Massachusetts be required to administer the MCAS. All schools – public, charter, private, and parochial – must follow Massachusetts building codes and fire codes, so why not educational codes? As it stands now, students enrolled in private schools essentially are buying their way out of the MCAS. A yes vote on Question 2 eliminates this go-around.
Moreover, the C in MCAS nominally stands for comprehensive. How comprehensive can this test be when it leaves out so much of what makes a child a good student? Where is the measure of tenacity, kindness, or creativity? Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences says that we humans have eight different ways of manifesting our intelligence. Eight.
The MCAS doesn’t come close to fully encompassing a student’s knowledge or abilities. It’s like judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree.
Seven years ago in this newspaper I impishly proposed that we expand the MCAS to include mastery of a foreign language. The idea was to make monolingual suburban students master a foreign language in a few years the same way many immigrant urban students have to master English. On a serious note, being multilingual is a better career skill than scoring proficient on the MCAS. Once again the MCAS narrows the curriculum.
The same narrowing happens in the sciences. Sung-Joon Pai, a former teacher at Fenway High School and Boston Arts Academy, laments the lack of creativity in schools today. In both his former schools, the science classes were themselves blended and/or were integrated with the arts so that students studied topics from all angles.
As he noted in a Facebook post: “(That) was learning! Then the science MCAS came and we were forced to separate our courses into the traditional subjects and ensure our students were prepared for the topics selected by the test makers.”
Please vote Yes on Question 2 so that schools no longer have to cater to one measure of success.
Michael Maguire teaches Latin at Boston Latin Academy and serves on the Executive Board of the Boston Teachers Union. The ideas expressed here are his own.